1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink cartridge and an ink jet recording apparatus. In particular, the present invention relates to an ink cartridge in which an ink injection port is prevented from drying by a protection cap, and an ink jet recording apparatus provided with this ink cartridge.
2. Description of the Related Art
Several kinds of conventional ink cartridges are used in an ink jet type recording apparatus in order to obtain a stable recording image that always has a high quality, while preventing the ink in the ink injection port from drying or evaporating without non-uniformity in the image caused by the failure of the ink injection.
In general, if the ink injection port is exposed for a long time, the drying is started in a few minutes so that a fault such as a nozzle clogging condition would occur. For this reason, the non-uniformity in the image caused by a dot skip would occur in printing. It is therefore necessary to prevent the dry air around the ink injection port from coming into direct contact with the nozzle when the ink injection port is not used.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. Hei 8-39827 describes a technology for covering the ink injection port by a cap member that is detachable as desired in order to protect the ink injection port.
However, in the above-described piece of prior art, since the protection cap is of a detachable type, there is a problem that the protection cap may become lost.
Also, it is troublesome to remove the protection cap upon the installation on the recording apparatus.